How to manually tune your guitar

Member

By Brave33
User-Submitted Article

Article Rating:

(7 Ratings)

manually tune your guitar

You can tune your guitar by ear with a little bit of practice and training of your ear.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Step 1

The most difficult part of manually tuning your guitar is tuning your Low E string. You will need to be able to find this tone without a reference point. This will take some practice. If you can hum an E this will help you. Once you are able to do this you can easily tune the rest of your strings. We will concentrate on standard tuning (EADGBE)
Step 2

Tuning the A (2nd string)
When the E string is tuned, you can finger the fifth fret on this string and this note will be an A. Now you can play the A string open and match it to the tone of the first string fifth fret tone. Slowly turn the tuner until the two tones match. You now have your 1st and 2nd strings in tune.
Step 3

To tune the 3rd (D) and 4th (G) strings you will do the same as in step 2. Now that you have the A tuned, fingering the fifth fret will produce the D tone. When that is in tune, Use the D string at the fifth fret to produce the G tone. Now the first four strings are in tune.
Step 4

To tune the 5th (B) string, finger the Fourth fret on the 4th string which will produce the B tone. You can now match this tone on the 5th string.
Step 5

To tune the 6th (E) string, finger the 5th fret once again on the 5th (B) string and match the tones once again. The 1st and 6th strings are the same tone but are one octave different.

Comments